The thing about Kickstarter is that it’s just not that edgy. Sure, hackable game consoles and overpriced smartwatches are cool, but where’s the grown up fun? Well, starting on Thursday, it’s all happening at Offbeatr, your crowdfunding destination for all things naughty. It’s a Kickstarter for porn.Offbeatr’s proposition is simple. If you’ve got some adult entertainment projects — movies, books, websites, art installations, whatever! — you can apply to raise funding on Offbeatr. The site’s staff green-lights the most promising projects, and they go live for all to fund. From that point on, it works like Kickstarter with users making pledges toward a goal that, if reached, will help make fantasies become reality. (It’s unclear if creators take special requests.) Unlike Kickstarter, Offbeatr adds a social curation layer where users can vote for their favorite projects, regardless of whether they fund them or not. Creators can also sell things on their Offbeatr page, so you can not only support future projects but also chip in for piece of the past.From a big picture point-of-view, Offbeatr thinks it can brighten the future of the porn industry as a whole. “For Offbeatr it's about going directly to the fans and supporters and engaging them in the process and giving content creators access to capital they previously never had access to,” CEO Ben Tao told TechCrunch. “By getting this capital the industry will start to innovate and take more risks with business models, products they make, and how they reach out to their customers.”For now the site is a bit sparse. There’s one to revamp a section of Cherry.tv for women, another for a “Japanese cultural porn exchange” and another descriptively titled “Super Fuck Friends.” But if what Tao says is true, and the influx of crowdfunds pushes the industry the industry innovate and take more risks, the possibilities are endless. And probably, eventually, pretty weird.
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